“All right. Now I am concerned about the damage that could have happened, so I will write a recommendation to Dr. Zielinski that the medication appears to be unsuitable, particularly if you have no history of panic attacks, pet. I’m also a little worried that you’re still very tense at the moment, and you might be at risk of a cycle of attacks for the rest of the night.”
“I’m not going to hospital,” Darren hissed through gritted teeth. He was noticeably tensing again, his chest beginning to move a fraction faster and his face tightening.
“A hospital wouldn’t help you, given that you are anxious about going in the first place, pet,” Dr. Morris soothed. “I’m going to give you a mild anti-anxiety medication that is compatible with your antidepressants. It will feel a little like being sedated, and hopefully you’ll be able to sleep for the rest of the night without further disturbances. I would recommend seeing your doctor as a matter of urgency in the morning.”
“I’ll call,” Jayden said, squeezing Darren. “I’ll call you in sick too.”
Darren nodded faintly; the doctor stripped her gloves off and rummaged in her bag, producing a blister packet.
“Orange juice?” Jayden prompted, but Darren shook his head.
“Water,” he said. “Feel sick.”
“That’s perfectly normal,” Dr. Morris said. “Your body is experiencing a form of shock. Have this.” She pressed a blue pill into Darren’s lax palm. “Take that, and get yourself back to bed.”
“What can I do?” Jayden asked, handing the glass to Darren and biting his lip.
“Keep him warm, keep him as calm as possible,” the doctor said simply. “If he’s been suffering from nausea, keep an eye on him for the next hour to make sure he doesn’t try to vomit the pill back up. Give him his antidepressant in the morning, as it’s never a good idea to come immediately off antidepressants, but no painkillers for his headache, no alcohol, no caffeine, no narcotics, and no over-the-counter medications of any kind. I would recommend extreme rest and relaxation until you can get him back to Dr. Zielinski, but panic attacks are often exhausting, so I doubt he’ll fight you on that front tonight.”
Jayden swallowed, still petting Darren’s hair softly. “All right,” he murmured as Darren knocked back the pill. “Darren? Come on, let’s go back to bed?”
It took the doctor and Jayden to make him stand, but he was fairly steady on his feet when he did, and Rachel reappeared like a spectre to show the doctor out whilst Jayden hustled Darren up both flights of stairs into the attic room. He put a towel over Darren’s pillow to keep off the drying blood, too rattled to consider letting him wash it off first, and by the time Rachel knocked at the bedroom door at the bottom of the attic stairs, Darren was buried in the duvet, fresh pyjamas and a sleeping shirt, and towelled pillows, and more than halfway to being asleep.
“You both okay?” she asked, when Jayden beckoned her up.
“Rattled,” he said, scrubbing both hands over his face. “Really fucking rattled. Like…I just…” He felt stressed, in truth. Incredibly stressed, and very strained, and very worried, just worried all the time now because the pills weren’t helping, they were making everything worse, they were turning Darren into a panicky, twitchy mess that was capable of anything, and he couldn’t put Darren on bloody suicide watch because he couldn’t be there every minute of every day, but if he wasn’t…
Rachel enfolded him in a tight, bony hug that was sorely needed. They stood at the top of the stairs, locked around each other, and Darren slept in a light, drug-aided doze—and Jayden clung both to Rachel, and to the fading hope that this was all going to work out for the best.
Chapter 16
The very next morning, Dr. Zielinski paid a home visit, issued a six-week prescription for half the current dose of fluoxetine, and then complete cessation after that.
“Fluoxetine should not be causing panic attacks,” he said firmly. “It is a very rare side effect and one I am not happy about.” But Darren didn’t seem to care, was still exhausted from the last forty-eight hours, and once the doctor had left, went straight back to sleep. Jayden let him.
Jayden had to go to work, though: the blog deadline was looming, and Rachel—in the midst of the February half-term—had agreed to cancel her date with Tony and stay in.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” she said cheerfully, and set up camp on Jayden’s half of the bed with Pog and a pile of the Game of Thrones novels that she was attempting to work her way through. Jayden had been reluctant to go, hovering over Darren until the very last possible second, and making Rachel promise to text every half hour with updates once he was finally persuaded to leave.
Unsurprisingly, he had been fairly late to work, and had walked straight into Stephanie grilling Gina on his whereabouts. “I’m so sorry,” he blurted out, dropping his bag in his chair and running both of his hands through his hair. He hadn’t even styled it, he’d been that rushed and that…distracted. “I just…Darren had a really—really—bad night, and I had to call the doctor this morning, and…”
Stephanie softened fractionally and nodded. “All right. Come on, dear,” she said, turning him around by the shoulder. “My office. Gina, a cup of tea for him, hmm?”
Gina jumped to it; Jayden let himself be led into the little office and slumped into the visitor’s chair, feeling sick and shaky himself all of a sudden.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and Stephanie waved him off.
“You’re a hard worker, Jayden,” she said. “When you’re late, I know there’s a reason, and you haven’t turned in a thing overdue yet.”
Jayden fidgeted. “I…”
“Do you need to be at home today?” Stephanie asked gently, sitting down across the desk from him and leaning her elbows on it, studying him. She had a kindly face, covered in understanding, and Jayden began to relax.
“My housemate is keeping an eye on him,” he said slowly.
“What happened?”
Jayden licked his lips. Gina plonked a mug of tea on the desk, squeezed his shoulder, and retreated, closing the office door behind her and muting the chatter and clatter of keys out on the main floor. “He, um…” He swallowed. “The doctor put him on antidepressants. Prozac, you know, fluoxetine.” Stephanie nodded. “He started that about six or seven weeks ago, and he got…he got worse, much worse, and they never started making him better, and then yesterday he lashed out and destroyed the kitchen and he seemed really…I don’t know, he seemed panicky, and he was saying he needed air and he couldn’t breathe, and then last night…well, this morning, about two or three, I woke up and I found him in the kitchen having a massive panic attack, like, banging his head on the cupboard and bleeding and hyperventilating…”
Stephanie pushed the tea a little closer towards him. “Drink it, dear,” she encouraged in her most motherly of tones.
Jayden took it, wrapping his hands around it, but didn’t drink. “He’s never had panic attacks before,” he whispered.
“Forget about him for the moment,” Stephanie said gently, and Jayden started. “You’re wound very tight, dear. You know Gina’s been clearing half your emails before you get in every morning? You’re under a lot of pressure and I’d offer a week or two compassionate leave, but I’m worried that it won’t help if you’re not getting any relief at home.”
Jayden flared up, slamming the mug down. How dare she imply that Darren was being unsupportive? He couldn’t help it, he was in no fit state to be looking out for himself, never mind Jayden. “It’s not Darren’s fault!” he snapped furiously. “He can’t help being…”
“I didn’t say it was, dear,” Stephanie said calmly, fishing a tissue out of the packet on her desk and popping it under the cup of slopped tea. “I’m saying you aren’t getting a great deal of support yourself—which is wholly understandable, your boyfriend isn’t in any kind of a state to offer it and that’s nobody’s fault—but you need to look after yourself too, not just focus on him constantly.”
Jayd
en subsided guiltily and chewed on his lip. “I can’t just…I don’t know, go and visit my parents or something,” he said eventually. “He needs me right now.” He did. He needed more than Jayden knew how to offer, and that was the problem.
“Is the doctor persisting with the Prozac?”
“No, he’s going to take him off them.”
“Then now is the time to relax, dear,” Stephanie prompted. “He’ll start to feel better as the drugs wear off, and if your housemate is watching him today, then take today. Go out with Gina at lunchtime and leave your phone in the office. Go to your theatre group tonight. Gina said you’ve not been in weeks.”
Jayden flushed. “Darren needed me,” he repeated weakly.
“And you’re not going to be able to help him for the next treatment plan if you’re so stressed you’re losing sleep and irritable with everyone,” Stephanie said, and Jayden graduated from a gentle pink to a heady red. “Have the day for yourself, for once. He’s in good hands for the next eight hours, isn’t he, now you take some time for yourself.”
Jayden clutched the mug again and nodded slowly. “Can I…?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Can I go out with Rod?” he asked, referring to the paper’s main photographer, a friendly self-described Welshman who was actually about as Welsh as Jayden was Muslim. “He’s going to get some pictures of the new building work at Portsmouth harbour, and I like going out with him and getting away from the blog every now and then. You know, a breath of fresh air and some new experience and stuff and…I want to do something. I…I want to be busy for a bit.”
“Then you do that,” Stephanie said simply, and the tension between Jayden’s shoulder blades released fractionally. “I’ll take Becky off the report. You can have your first front-page piece, how’s that?”
Jayden smiled, sipping at the tea. “Thanks, Stephanie,” he said lowly.
“I know what you’re going through, dear,” she replied serenely. “My first husband had depression. In the end, I couldn’t take the strain of it and we divorced.”
Jayden paused, and didn’t want to ask, and yet…did. Wanted to know. “What happened to him?” he whispered.
“Last I heard, he was living in Dublin with his new wife and a couple of kids,” Stephanie said. “People do get better, dear. They might not fully recover, but they do get better. Once the doctor finds the right treatment plan for Darren, he’ll be the man you fell for again.”
Jayden sighed heavily. “It’s like I don’t even recognise him at the minute,” he confessed lowly. “It’s like he’s someone else.”
“He’ll come out of it,” she reassured him and patted his hand. “Just give the doctor some time to get him all worked out, and things will look up in the end.”
“You got divorced.”
“I also didn’t know my husband suffered before I married him,” she explained gently. “From what I gather, you’ve known since the beginning. It makes a difference, dear, if you go in with a certain amount of knowledge and acceptance. Now go on. Clean out your inbox and I’ll send you over the background to what Rod’s up to. He’s going out at twelve, so you’ll need to catch him by eleven-thirty to discuss it.”
Jayden stood up, taking the mug of tea with him. Gina waved when he emerged from the office, and he smiled, raising the mug before heading to the kitchenette to refill it. When he came back, she came around the desk to hug him, and offered a share in her daily chocolate stash. Jayden decided to hold off on that, and maybe get lunch when he was out with Rod.
And decided to go to the am-drams tonight.
* * * *
Jayden let himself into the house at half past seven, all set for whispering and tiptoeing around and a sort-of suicide watch, only to find the TV blaring some action film, Rachel watching in rapt attention, and Darren bundled up on the sofa in a duvet and a thousand cushions, looking drowsy, but actually awake.
“Hello,” Jayden breathed, bending to kiss the top of that curly head. “How are you feeling?”
Darren looked half-asleep, those tropical eyes distinctly hazy, and he was shivering very faintly. Jayden frowned. “M’cold,” Darren explained and scrubbed a huge hand over his face with a yawn.
Rachel turned down the TV. “He woke up about two and was shivering like crazy,” she said. “I called the quack, he said to just keep taking his temperature, but it’s probably the fluo-thing.”
“Fluoxetine.”
“Whatever.”
Jayden perched by Darren’s hip, feeling oddly happy with the unexpected development. He had expected Darren to still be sleeping—or at least not open to being bullied out of bed. He certainly hadn’t expected a verbal greeting. It felt like the first time they’d said anything remotely normal to each other in weeks.
“I gave him his half-dose too,” Rachel added.
“He is in the room,” Darren snapped and yawned again.
“He’s also knackered,” Rachel continued blithely, then grinned. “And he had a little bit of a cry.”
“Rachel.”
“You did!”
“Why?” Jayden prompted.
“Fuck knows,” Darren mumbled.
“He just went tearful and had a bit of an ugly crying jag,” Rachel said. “He’s been all right the last couple of hours. In and out a bit. You want me to watch him tomorrow?”
“Please?”
“I’m not a kid,” Darren grumbled.
“Nah, kids stick their fingers in the mains, they don’t try and brain themselves on cupboard doors,” Rachel snarked. Darren flipped her off, yawning widely again, and Jayden smiled. Despite the grouchy subject matter, and the fact he could hear in Rachel’s voice that she was semi-serious and not pleased with Darren in the slightest, Jayden felt…relieved.
Because Darren was responding, but not exploding.
Jayden brewed up some tea, made a sandwich for himself, and wriggled under the duvet with Darren. He did feel marginally chilly—for Darren, anyway—and curled up against Jayden’s chest and shoulder with a contented sort of noise, and Jayden rubbed his hands over those wiry biceps to warm them and begged Rachel to change the channel and find something that wasn’t James bloody Bond. Jayden hated James Bond. Boring, stupid, pretentious, offensive, sexist, whoremongering twat. (Darren had laughed himself sick the first time Jayden had ranted to him about it.) He ranted, and Rachel grudgingly obliged, mostly to shut him up.
But by the time Jayden won the telly ‘debate,’ Darren had dozed off again.
“He’s seemed more like himself today,” Rachel murmured. “I think the sedative helped out a bit.”
Jayden rested his cheek on the top of Darren’s head and closed his eyes briefly. “Good,” he whispered.
“This past two months has sucked, hasn’t it?” she said eventually, and Jayden stroked his fingers in loose patterns over Darren’s back. His skin was warm, even if he had the chills. At the very top of his shoulder, the faintly waxy layer of tattoo ink was comfortingly familiar, oddly so given how fascinating Jayden still found the feel of it.
“Yeah,” he agreed vaguely and pressed his nose into the mad hair to inhale gently. For a moment, he could pretend everything was fine, or Darren just had the flu, or…or something little and temporary and fleeting, something that wasn’t this. Wasn’t this ongoing battle with drugs and treatment, wasn’t the sensation of constantly backsliding, braking, and backsliding again, wasn’t the sensation of losing and of everything getting markedly, exponentially worse as time rumbled by and betrayed them. It was a constant downhill struggle, it seemed, and Jayden wanted it desperately to stop. Jayden was beginning to wonder, very vaguely in the back of his mind, if the dark days and the black episodes hadn’t been…
Well.
Preferable.
* * * *
Paul rang that evening, his voice audible down the phone from Rachel picking it up to the moment she dropped it unapologetically on Jayden’s face and wandered back into the kitchen. She was making her e
vening meal before popping out to the pub with Tony, her self-assigned treat for watching Darren during the day, and Jayden rolled his eyes at her retreating back before pressing the phone to his ear.
“Hi, Paul.”
“Hey, Jade. All right?”
“Um…,” Jayden eyed Darren, who was still dozing on his shoulder. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“…You guess so?”
Jayden switched the phone to his other hand and tucked his arm back around Darren’s shoulder. The lack of any movement suggested he’d probably gone to sleep proper now, but his face was tucked into Jayden’s chest and Jayden just couldn’t tell. “Darren’s being taken off the fluoxetine,” he murmured, and Paul made a sound that was like…a verbalised grimace, or something. “He had a panic attack or something and hurt his head, so yeah, we’re giving up on the fluoxetine and the doctor’s going to try something else.”
“…How bad are we talking?”
“…Pretty bad,” Jayden admitted quietly.
“Shit,” Paul muttered. “He hurt himself?”
“Mm. I don’t…I don’t know, it might have been like how he used to self-harm. It wasn’t a suicide attempt.”
“Right,” Paul said. “Uh. Right. Should we be cancelling plans and taking leave and coming down there?”
“I don’t think so,” Jayden said lowly. “We’ve set up a watch system and he seems a little bit better today, so…I don’t know. Not yet anyway.”
Paul hummed.
“I might have to call his brother though,” Jayden admitted and wrinkled his nose. “He tends to drop by for random visits and he’ll go spare if he realises we haven’t told him stuff and he doesn’t like me very much as it is and…”
“Whoa, okay,” Paul interrupted. “But Daz is, you know. Sorted now?”
“As much as we can for the minute,” Jayden said lowly. “Why, um…why are you calling? I mean, I don’t want to get rid of you or anything, he’s just…he’s asleep on me right now, and I don’t want to disturb him, so…”
“Yeah, well…”
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